How physics and philosophy took every wrong turn and wasted decades since the event ontology Carey R. Carlson, January 31, 2019 (
[email protected]) “self is a knot in the net of inter-dependent origination” -- Dogen, 13th century
Part 1: A straight path without the detours Astronomers tell us that when they look back at a distant galaxy they are looking back in time. That insight holds the key to the reduction of space-time to time alone. At close scale, when you are reading from a book two feet in front of your eyes, you are likewise looking back in time, but only a couple nanoseconds past. (The speed of light is about a foot per nanosecond.) At that close scale it is nearly impossible to suspend your belief that space is instantaneous extension and not reducible to time. It took Russell and Whitehead to pursue the logic of reducing spacetime to time at any scale. In framing a philosophic scheme, each metaphysical notion should be given the widest extension of which it seems capable. It is only in this way that the true adjustment of ideas can be explored. More important even than Occam’s doctrine of parsimony—if it be not another aspect of the same—is this doctrine that the scope of a metaphysical principle should not be limited otherwise than by the necessity of its meaning. – Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (AI) The event ontology reformulates dual-parameter space-time as a single-parameter causal web of time-ordered moments. (Time order and causal order are conflated.) The discrete version of the ontology, based on discrete time, is captured by the image of “the arrow diagram of the universe.” Directed graphs depicting the “arrows of time” serve as graphic representations of temporal/causal succession. The nodes of a directed graph represent moments of time. The connecting arrows represent temporal transitions that connect one moment to another. In 2003 I noticed that the arrows of time can form frequency ratios.
In the above time diagram, two paths begin at the same moment and end at the same moment. Thus, both paths span a single common time interval. That provides a basis for comparing the frequencies of the two paths. One path takes 2 steps while the other path takes 3 steps, forming a frequency ratio of 2:3. No one had ever noticed that time can make frequency ratios. It would lead to the final reduction of physics to time. By virtue of Planck’s E=hf, two energy values, E1 and E2, are equal to two frequency values, hf1 and hf2. The ratio of the two energy values, E1 / E2, is equal to the ratio of the two frequency values, f1 / f2. (Planck’s constant drops out.) The frequency ratios made by time can serve to define energy ratios. The arrows of the graphs, depicting steps of discrete time, are the units of the frequency ratios. The step of time is thus implicated as the quantum of energy ratios. Directed graphs now serve as quantum schematics, with each arrow depicting a quantum. Russell and Whitehead leveraged the event ontology to treat the mind-body problem. I was still an undergraduate when I became obsessed with the mind-body problem by reading Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World, which showed me that “a patch of red” is no part of theoretical physics. Russell puts it this way in Human Knowledge: Historically, physicists started from naïve realism, that is to say, from the belief that external objects are exactly as they seem. On the basis of this assumption, they developed a theory which made matter something quite unlike what we perceive. Thus their conclusion contradicted their premise, though no one except a few philosophers noticed this. (HK) After graduating in math, with no courses in philosophy, I read on my own for two years. Then I took an extension course in philosophy of science from Grover Maxwell. The text book he assigned was Human Knowledge. I found the solution to the mind-body problem in that book, as Grover had before me. As Russell said, it takes a “leap of imagination” to rid oneself of “a presumed familiarity with the physical world.” Then, again, there is the argument about brain and mind. When a physiologist examines a brain, he does not see thoughts; therefore the brain is one thing and the mind which thinks is another. The fallacy in this argument consists in supposing that a man can see matter. Not even the ablest physiologist can perform this feat. His percept when he looks at a brain is an event in his own mind, and has only a causal connection with the brain that he fancies he is seeing. When, in a powerful telescope, he sees a tiny luminous dot, and interprets it
as a vast nebula existing a million years ago, he realizes that what he sees is different from what he infers. The difference from the case of a brain looked at through a microscope is only one of degree: there is exactly the same need of inference, by means of the laws of physics, from the visual datum to its physical cause. And just as no one supposes that the nebula has any close resemblance to a luminous dot, so no one should suppose that the brain has any close resemblance to what the physiologist sees. (HK) I spent three years with Grover at the University of Minnesota, from 1973-76. By then it became apparent that Grover could not communicate our understanding to his colleagues. I left academia and had a career in electronics and computer graphics. I figured that the solution to the mind-body problem would come to light without my help. It didn’t. In 2003 I wrote my “belated thesis for Grover” in 2003, long after he had died.
I had used arrow diagrams to explain the event ontology in 1973 for my first paper for Grover. I used them again now in the chapter “Space-time as Causal Structure. This time I noticed the frequency ratios. I knew that when you have frequency, you have energy, thanks to Planck’s coupling of energy and frequency at the quantum level. I finished the book with the assumption that “the arrow diagram of the universe” is an adequate image of the foundation of physics. Then I extracted the diagrams for physics into a TOE booklet.
That’s an extendable 4-D time lattice depicted on the cover. Each interior node is at the intersection of four time axes. The hexagonal cell used to build the diagram is also used to build the electron and its atomic cloud formations. The nodes of the diagram are interpreted by Whitehead as “occasions of experience,” sentient events that Whitehead likened to momentary monads. The connecting arrows depict the causal inheritance pairing relations he called “physical prehensions.” The TOE booklet culminated in construction of the electron and its atomic cloud formations and Bohr’s formula. The hexagonal cell of the 4-D lattice, used to graph the electron, has locations for additional quanta of forward momentum and charge, and provides up/down spin arrangements:
Bohr’s formula is obtained by scaling each sequence such that sequences of equal energy (36 hex cycles for each sequence in the diagram below) elapse in the same amount of time. The discrete time dilation also serves as the basis for discrete General Relativity.
f1
f2
f3
f2 - f3
I’ve drawn the hex cycles as neutrino cycles, without any charge quanta. As drawn, they depict modes of neutrino propagation. If we populate the hex cycles with charge quanta, we get electron clouds. In that case, we would have, from left to right, a free electron, a hydrogen cloud, a helium cloud, and finally, a hydrogen cloud sequence disturbed by an encounter with a photon. The first three diagrams mark the start of a progression that continues in step with the
periodic table. The stable clouds feature uniform cycles of uniform frequency. The cloud disturbed by the photon exhibits a modulation of cycle-pattern and frequency. The frequency of the photon, either incident or emitted, is the difference in frequency of the two cycles involved in the modulation. This scenario, generalized to the whole series of cloud possibilities, yields Bohr’s formula for the spectral wavelengths of photons absorbed and emitted by the atoms. Bohr’s formula encapsulates a wealth of spectroscopy data. An explanatory model of the underlying
structure of electrons and their behavior should not be more complex than the empirical data it is supposed to explain. The model represents theory, while the tidy formula represents the data which the theory is concocted to explain. In contrast to Bohr’s model, we now have a model of electron-photon dynamics that is nearly as simple as the formula which encapsulates the data. It is a model consisting of quantum schematics that can be diagrammed precisely. With this model, the Rydberg constant resolves to unity, because the electron cycle provides the unit of mass and the unit of charge, while the constants “c” and “h” resolve to unity by more general considerations. We’re left with the diagrams themselves, in which the electron appears as the “realtime clock” that sets the base frequency for the EM spectrum. A Nobel prize winner confirmed the account of Bohr’s formula in terms of time alone. He couldn’t see how further development would be possible and he neglected to pursue it. Later I found the nuclear structure, based on the octet truss arrangements shown below. The spatial forms become causal sets when time direction is assigned to each strut. The resulting forms assemble themselves into protons, neutrons, and nuclei.
The discrete event ontology is the same as today’s “causal set theory,” in regard to the formations that can arise from temporal/causal succession. In causal set theory, the nodes and connecting arrows of directed graphs are termed “elements” and “causal links.” Causal Set Theory and the Origin of Mass-ratio http://vixra.org/pdf/1006.0070v1.pdf Quantum theory is reconstructed using standalone causal sets. The frequency ratios inherent in causal sets are used to define energy-ratios, implicating the causal link as the quantum of action. Space-time and its particle-like sequences are then constructed from causal links. A 4D time-lattice structure is defined and then used to model neutrinos and electron clouds, which together constitute a 4-D manifold. A 6-D time-lattice is used to model the nucleons. The
integration of the nucleus with its electron cloud affords calculation of the mass-ratio of the proton (or the neutron) with respect to the electron. Arrow diagrams, along with several balland-stick models, are used to streamline the presentation. The reconstruction of physics from a temporal successor relation is no accident. Steps leading to the final reduction of physics 1687. Newton creates the first reduction of physics, formulating the laws of motion in terms of space, time, and mass. 1865. Maxwell formulates the theory of EM waves propagating at light-speed "c." Electric charge joins space, time and mass as the fourth fundamental parameter. Also, "the aether" is assumed as a medium for wave propagation. 1900. Planck's E=hf equates discrete energy values of emitted light with discrete frequency values of the light. 1905. Einstein postulates "c" as an absolute velocity limit. The existence of a reference frame to define absolute rest or motion is denied. The aether is discarded. Space-time and its metric are devised purely to make physics conform to the mysterious limiting velocity. 1927. Russell and Whitehead fashion an event ontology that reduces space-time to time alone. Whitehead commits to discrete time, yielding the discrete version of the ontology. That provides the explanation for a limiting velocity, since the growth of space-like intervals is a purely structural consequence of discrete temporal advance. "Space cannot outrun time." The discrete event ontology would later be formalized for physics as "causal set theory." 2004-2010. Frequency ratios are recognized in the directed graphs of causal sets. The frequency ratios serve to define energy ratios in accord with E=hf. The causal link is implicated as the quantum of energy. Directed graphs then serve as quantum schematics, each arrow depicting a quantum. The electron and its atomic cloud formations are graphed. The fine structure constant and Bohr's formula are obtained from the graphs. The inverse square laws are tied to the inverse squares of Bohr's formula. Discrete time dilation, from one atomic cloud to the next, provides a basis for discrete General Relativity. The proton and neutron are constructed and the value of their mass-ratios to the electron are derived from the graphs. The particle sequences have their signature DeBroglie values, resolving the wave-particle duality. Symmetry, as the only organizational principle that governs the constructions, assumes the role of the forces.
Part 2: Every wrong turn Einstein conceived of space and time as “welded together,” retaining space and time as distinct parameters. He never took advantage of the reduction of space-time to time alone. He remarked, concerning the possibility of a discrete manifold, that it could provide an inherent metric whereas a continuum cannot. If he had conceived of a discrete time manifold, he might have noticed that it provides an inherent metric based on frequency ratios, yielding a structural definition of energy and its quantum. That could then have produced the proper foundation for physics a century ago. The collapse of physics to time would have directed philosophers to the event ontology and its resolution of the mind-body problem. That didn’t happen, and failing to learn from Russell and Whitehead, physics and philosophy are still paying the price. The Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is supposed to give the other particles their masses, though you’d be hard pressed to find an intelligible explanation. The Higgs is sidelined in importance by the reduction of particles to quanta, since each particle has mass due to its constituent quanta, and this is easy to understand with the help of arrow diagrams. The rest of the Standard Model should reduce to causal sets, given the worked example of the common particles. String theory. Said to be the most complex theory yet devised, string theory posits pseudoNewtonian strings with vibration modes that provide frequency values, and thus energy values. Compare that with the simplest theory that is logically possible. It has a dyadic successor relation and its generic relata—the minimal equipment needed to define “structure.” There is no need to posit strings when time itself provides frequency/energy values. Besides that, the theory of temporal succession confirms Whitehead’s solution to the mind-body problem, while string theory only entrenches the problem. Physicalism. In philosophy of science, the view of the universe as an insentient mechanism is called “physicalism.” Whitehead described it as conception of “vacuous actuality.” It describes how physicists conceive their theories today. Philosophers mostly take their cue from physics, trusting it to set the boundaries for understanding the world. Some retain a grasp of the fact that phenomenal qualities are left out of the physicalistic view. Some even show an interest in panpsychism, and there are Whitehead scholars who rightly see the promise of a “re-enchantment of the world.” But no one seems to be aware that both Russell and Whitehead situated the sentient occasions of human experience among the causally primitive events of physics. Their analysis of causal structure has taken physics to its final reduction, with occasions of sentient feeling filling the role of primitive causes and effects. Continuity and Collapse. The space-time continuum is a standard part of physics. Godel showed that Einstein’s equations for General Relativity allow for time to return to an earlier moment. That spawned speculation that time travel is possible, though Godel’s own conclusion was that something is amiss with Einstein’s equations. Quantum theory also employs continuous mathematics with the theory of Schroedinger waves. This is widely considered fundamental, although the waves must collapse to quantum states, and the theory of such collapse is a whole other problem. With the reconstruction of physics from causal sets, there is no continuity or calculus at the foundation. Grasping the foundation is not a mathematical challenge. Time is assumed at the outset to be discrete succession with strictly
forward direction. There are no continuous waves that need collapsing, and no spatially defined states for waves to collapse to, were waves to exist. Calculus can still have utility without there being a basis for it at the foundation. In economics, calculus is useful for dealing with supply-and-demand curves without anyone supposing there must be infinitesimal economic transactions. The same should be understood of physics. Chaos physics. Einstein had a strong intuition that causal coherence ought to be expected in quantum theory (“God does not play dice with the universe.”) Physics took a different course, founding the orderly behavior of classical physics upon chaos and randomness at the quantum level. Einstein was right, as it turns out. The stable particles have quantum schematics showing self-organized time sequences with time-reversal symmetry. Multiverse and fine tuning. Contemporary theories involve irreducible numerical parameters that must have very precise values for our stable universe to exist. A generous explanation is offered whereby many universe trials (a multiverse) eventually produce a universe with the “finely tuned” parameters that make a tenuous stability possible. From the constructions produced already, it appears that a causal set universe requires no fundamental numerical parameters at all. The ratio-based metric allows “c” and “h” have the value 1. The fine structure constant appears as the number of arrows in a helium cloud cycle. The mass-ratio of either the proton or neutron with respect to the electron is calculated from their arrow diagrams. The arrow diagrams give the impression of a stable universe that proceeds from the sheer stepping action of time and nothing else. Orderly behavior at the quantum level provides an appropriate basis for the dependable physics of everyday life that we rely on without hesitation. The Big Bang. This following is taken from the TOE booklet: Upon further reflection, it appears that the "Big Bang" has been misconstrued as a singularity marking the beginning of time, when it is more likely that our system of temporal succession has no beginning. As we consider earlier and earlier stages of the universe, we conceive a spatially shrinking universe, converging quite naturally according to our spatial intuitions to a point-like minimum of spatial extent. But the clarified situation involves higher frequencies, and the "shrinking of space" is a pure consequence of these increasingly higher frequencies. A recent issue of Discover magazine featured a marble-sized sphere on the cover graphic that represents the spatial size of the universe at t=10e-34 seconds. Yes, space shrinks toward zero as all frequencies increase, but clarity on the subject again demands that we relinquish unanalyzed spatial intuitions. The integer exponent in the equation is heading toward larger integers (higher frequencies) as we delve into earlier stages of the universe. Nothing in the basis of our theory suggests that frequencies should have an upper limit, unless we restrict consideration to a bounded region. Nothing suggests that the exponent in the equation will, with further knowledge on our part, attain some satisfactorily high integer and reach a "glass ceiling." Physicists of the distant future, should they be likewise captive to their spatial intuitions, might well conclude that our age was one of unbearable heat, a marble-sized universe suffering from excruciating proximity to a cataclysmic Big Bang. Brain science: the unitary executive. A few years ago I noticed that brain scientists were trying to make a theory of a “unitary executive” that would function as overall command and
control of the sub-processes of brain activity. Then they went quiet, apparently giving up. The discrete event ontology can employ a quantum sequence of human mental events as unitary executive. The human series transpires at a rate of ten per second, as inferred from psychophysical experiments. The following is taken from “Finite Eventism,” my chapter in David Skrbina’s book Mind that Abides: Panpsychism in the new millennium. The standard conception of a brain is one of instantaneous extension in space, with no earlier-and-later involved in its composition. That is a brain without quanta. Such a brain has no place in physics. Taking Special Relativity into account, the cortical surface is a set of contemporaries— “causal cousins” related only by their causal ancestry. Such contemporaries are also poised to beget common causal descendants. The location of the mind in the brain is resolved by tracing the causal lineage of human mental events to and from the homuncular regions of the cortex. These are the key causal locators of human mental events. Each moment of a human series has additional predecessors and successors that belong to the brain but not to the human series. Forking and convergence connect the human series to other cycles of the brain. Quanta that fork off from the human series to the motor homunculus provide control of bodily movement. Quanta from the sensory homunculus converge upon the human series, updating the body-image of somatic awareness. At cycles of 10 Hz, the sequence of cause-and-effect is as follows: 1. One human moment forks off to many moments of the motor homunculus. 2. Effects are propagated along efferent nerve routes to the muscles. 3. Muscle action causes feedback signals along afferent nerve routes to the sensory homunculus. 4. Many moments of the sensory homunculus converge upon the next moment of the human series. During the tenth of a second between the two bounding moments of the above cycle, one human quantum also transpires, propagating the human series. Compare the above with the following passage from Russell: Consider now a single causal sequence, beginning with an external stimulus, say to the eye, continuing along afferent nerves to the brain, producing first a sensation and then a volition, followed by a current along efferent nerves and finally a muscular movement. This whole series, considered as one causal sequence, must, in physical space-time, occupy a continuous series of positions, and since the physiological terms of the series end and begin in the brain, the “mental” terms must begin and end in the brain. That is to say, considered as part of the manifold of events ordered in space-time by causal relations, sensations and volitions must be located in the brain. (HK)
Structural realism. Today philosophers of science today employ “structural realism” to describe the commonality that persists as physics shifts from one theory to another. Some speculate that physical structure consists of an endless regress of relations that never arrives at any primitive relata. No one has taken any notice of the structural definition of energy and the quantum in terms of time. My adviser, Grover Maxwell, thought that structural realism had reached its culmination in Human Knowledge and didn’t need to be tampered with. I summarize Russell’s view this way in the mind-body book: Our arrow diagram of the universe is meant to serve the imagination as a graphic depiction of the causal structure of our physical world. Russell contends that scientific knowledge is limited specifically to knowledge of causal structure, and secondly, that such knowledge rests upon conjecture. By contrast, our knowledge of sensory data, as pursued in phenomenology, is confined to that with which we have direct acquaintance. Phenomenology suspends judgment about the validity of any scheme of conjecture, causal or otherwise, that purports to provide a wider context for the realm of appearances. Hence, phenomenology does not set foot into the domain of science, and there is no overlap between phenomenological knowledge and scientific knowledge. There is, however, a crucial sense in which phenomenological knowledge, which Russell calls “knowledge by acquaintance,” takes precedence over scientific knowledge. The descriptive use of language can only gain a foothold where we have acquaintance with recognizable entities that we can name. This is the case with phenomenological description, but it is not the case with physical description. We have no direct acquaintance with any scientifically defined entities. In general, we can only legitimately denote a scientific entity as “that which bears some conjectured causal relation to sensory data.” If it is granted that science supplies the authoritative account of all physical bodies, then we do not have direct acquaintance with any physical body, contrary to our practical habits of thought and speech. According to science, knowledge of our physical surroundings is without exception mediated by neural signals. We distinguish a physical blow from an odor, or a flash of light from a roll of thunder, solely on the basis of which neural pathways are engaged in which firing frequencies. This uniform encoding of information is the source of all our opinions about the physical world. There is no bypassing this neural source of information—no alternate means of corroborating what our nerve signals tell us. One cannot adhere to science while rejecting this well-established doctrine of the human perceptual apparatus. Science began under the assumption that physical objects are directly perceived, and science has effectively disproved that assumption by establishing the role of neural transmission as the sole source of our perceptual information. If you hold a purely physicalistic doctrine of what exists, you are stuck in a paradox as to how perception happens at all, since a nerve cell is no more perceivable than any other physical entity. When this state of affairs is fully appreciated, one adopts a more conservative estimate of what can be known about the physical world. One is then amenable to the interpretation of science as a doctrine of causal structure inferred from the phenomenology of our mental percepts.
Part 3: How much longer? A clear and simple solution to the core problems of physics and philosophy, upsetting the careers and decades of invested thinking, will be rejected automatically if the troublesome findings come from an amateur. That’s my conclusion after spending years trying to share the findings. Everything stems from recognizing the frequency ratios made by discrete time, which first show up in directed graph of 3 arrows forming a triangle. That’s the whole solution to physics. Anyone could have found it. How it flew under the radar for so many years is a mystery. You only need to combine that simple discovery with an understanding of Russell and Whitehead’s event ontology. Here’s another passage from the mind-body book. Physicists are trained through common sense, and they remain realists in their attitudes regarding the physical world. They have not got rid of matter without finding a suitable substitute. Russell and Whitehead have this same realism in their outlook on the physical world. Thus, in the analysis of the physical world into events and causal relations, these are meant to bear the full load of commonsense belief in the existence of the physical world, a belief that is no longer well-served by the notion of matter. If you do manage to rid yourself of belief in matter, you then face the mirage of empty space, which is an even greater obstacle to our understanding. Empty space is the receptacle for intangible magnetic fields, gravitational fields, and nuclear forces. It does not seem that you could relinquish belief in this static receptacle of space and still preserve a meaning for physical existence. Again, as in the case of matter, science does not divest itself of 3dimensional space without supplying a more adequate replacement. In this case, the concept of a space that exists “all at once” is abandoned in favor of a procession of intersecting time sequences, which accounts for a limiting velocity in the universe. Physical location becomes a matter of relative position in a causal sequence of events. The previous chapter explained how physical location is assigned to mental events in accord with this view of science. This chapter looks at the same situation from the standpoint of the mental events. Rather than inserting mental events into a given system of physical events, we consider mental events to be the known base of scientific observation, and the rest of the world a “scaffold” of causeand-effect constructed around the mental events by systematic conjecture. From this perspective, mental events serve as the known origin for the causal location of physical events, and the contention of the previous chapter, that mental events have physical location, is a circumlocution and a foregone conclusion. This does not detract from the validity of the previous chapter, but rather lends reinforcement to it. Whether we assume the validity of modern scientific theory and subsequently find a place for mental events within that theory, or whether we start with the sensory data of our mental events and explain scientific knowledge as an extrapolation from this data to a wider causal setting, we come full circle to a consistent analysis of scientific knowledge and the method of its acquisition.
Five papers on my WordPress site temporalsuccession.com provide a comprehensive account of the above matters.
Some schools of Buddhism hold that the world consists of transitory moments of awareness which originate in a net of causal inter-dependence. Now we can see that physics and analytic philosophy converge to the same view. Russell withheld judgment as to the nature of events in the causal web that are not human sentient events. Whitehead generalized sentience to all the primitive events, gaining coherence by avoiding the action of mental events upon nonmental events and vice versa. He describes what it means to be spending time in a universe of pure process. The common expressions of mankind fashion the past for us in three aspects-Causation, Memory, and our active transformation of our immediate past experience into the basis of our present modification of it. Thus ‘perishing’ is the assumption of a role in a transcendent future. The not-being of occasions is their ‘objective immortality’. A pure physical prehension is how an occasion in its immediacy of being absorbs another occasion which has passed into the objective immortality of its notbeing. It is how the past lives in the present. It is causation. It is memory. It is perception of derivation. It is emotional conformation to a given situation, an emotional continuity of past with present. It is a basic element from which springs the self-creation of each temporal occasion. Thus perishing is the initiation of becoming. How the past perishes is how the future becomes. (Adventures of Ideas)
